Clean Out of Luck (Only Magic in the Building)

Chapter One

Scarlett

When someone knocks on your door, you have two choices: answer it and find out who it is, or crawl away and pretend like you’re not home.

Usually I prefer the second option, but I’m a little busy at the moment, standing on my bookshelf replacing lightbulbs.

It’s too bad there’s music playing over my Bluetooth speaker so whoever it is knows I’m home. And then there’s the part where I’ve been singing “Too Sweet” at the top of my lungs.

“Is that you, Gloria?” I call out, hoping she can hear me over the music. I can almost guarantee it’s my neighbor from 3G. She comes down here to the basement floor of The Serendipity to do her laundry more often than I would expect a single person to, and she usually thinks up a reason to need my help.

“It’s not Gloria. But I think she might have been the nice lady who let me inside.” The voice is deep—definitely not 50-year-old Gloria.

And what’s worse, I’m pretty sure I know who it is. It’s a voice I’ve heard for years. Not someone who lives in the same building as me, which makes me grumble a little at Gloria for letting him in. I would have preferred some warning before he showed up at my door.

“Come in!” I call back as I finish reattaching the light cover. I stretch to twist the screw holding the light casing just as my front door opens and Wade Hendrix walks inside. Every time I see him, I’m always shocked at how good looking he is. My breath catches as I take in that tousled dark blonde hair. A scruffy beard highlights his strong jawline and perfectly straight white teeth, currently giving me the most charming smile.

“Are you okay?” he asks as he takes in my awkward perch.

The question lingers in the air as I debate the answer. Am I okay? I don’t quite know. I’ve climbed halfway up my bookshelf, hoping to change the lightbulb, and now I need to climb down without toppling it over. I just organized these shelves in a color-coordinated system. I don’t want to mess it up.

I glance back at my unexpected guest.

Wade stands there, all 6’3” of him. His presence immediately makes me realize this apartment isn’t that big. He could probably change this lightbulb without perching precariously on a bookshelf.

His broad shoulders and arms strain at the confines of his T-shirt. They’re the kind of arms that look like he’s flexing even when he’s relaxed. He’s one of the few men in the world I can stand next to and feel dainty.

Mr. Big Guns, my brother’s best friend, stands in front of me, hands planted on his hips. That pose especially draws my focus to his arms, but I do my best to look away. He looks mildly amused, and I feel greatly annoyed.

What if I had been wandering around in a bath towel? I live by myself; it could have happened. Besides, we don’t have a drop-by kind of friendship .

“What are you doing here, Wade?” I ask flatly as I focus on the cream-colored Station 7 emblem on his navy shirt. He either just ended his shift at the fire station or he’s on his way to it.

He shrugs and folds his arms over his chest. “I haven’t seen you in a while. I was wondering if you had gotten yourself into another mess…and here I find you stuck on the top of a bookshelf.”

I scowl at that. “I am not stuck.”

At least I hadn’t been when I first climbed up here to replace the lightbulb. But once I got up here, I remembered I hadn’t secured the shelf to the wall. It wobbled, then wibbled before doing a full wibble-wobble, and I hung on for dear life. The books miraculously remained on the shelf, and I went about my business of changing the lightbulb.

“Then what would you call it?”

“Just some routine home maintenance,” I reply with a grimace as I clutch the top of the bookshelf with one hand and the old lightbulb with the other.

He follows my gaze to the ceiling where I’m staring. “Are you done changing the lightbulb?”

“Yes.” I carefully turn to face him again, moving slowly so I don’t rock the whole shelf.

“Why don’t you get down, then?” he asks with a laugh.

“I was checking to see if I need to dust up here,” I tell him.

Wade shakes his head. “You can’t get down, can you?”

“Of course I can.” I glare at him. “I just don’t want to knock my perfectly organized books off the shelf. Why are you in my apartment?”

I never see Wade without my big brother. And he’s never been to my new-ish apartment, so this is strange. Him stopping by unannounced is very out of character for him.

“My shift ended, and I figured I’d stop by on my way home.” He steps toward me and holds both his hands out as though he’s going to catch me if I jump.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not the one climbing up a bookshelf. This is the kind of safety thing people warn parents with toddlers about. It’s safe to say you have the ridiculous part covered.”

“Did you come over here to annoy me?”

He grins fully at that. “You caught me. How did you know?”

“Because it’s your life’s mission to annoy me,” I shoot back as I attempt to climb down the next shelf height.

“Well, how am I doing?” He asks as he places a steadying hand on the bookshelf and one on my leg.

“You’re a smashing success,” I grunt as I let go of the top of the shelf, expecting to fall to the ground in a graceless heap.

Except Wade doesn’t let that happen to me. He catches me around the waist and holds me close to him as he rests his other hand against the shelf to stop it from wobbling back and forth.

My arms flail around in the air for a moment before he slides me down to the ground in front of him. Somehow, I manage to hang on to the lightbulb. I turn around and point a finger at his incredibly firm chest with my free hand. “I didn’t mean for you to lift me down, silly goose.”

Wade holds up a hand in surrender, and my eyes land on the ring he’s wearing on his right hand. It looks good on him. “First of all, I think I’d be a silly gander, not a goose.”

I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing.

“Second, I didn’t mean to offend you by being nice. I’d hate for something like that to happen,” he says drily.

I laugh and rest a hand against his arm. “Being nice doesn’t come naturally to you. That’s why I get suspicious. ”

He chuckles at that and shakes his head. “Heard anything from Phoenix lately?”

I frown as I nod. “Only a couple of texts. I think he’s busy at his new job.”

My brother is a lawyer. And a good one at that. He was offered a job in Boston to train under the DA. Since he’s wanting to become the assistant district attorney here in Serendipity Springs, he didn’t even sleep on the job offer. He simply packed his bags, moved to Boston, and deserted me—and Wade—a week ago. I knew Wade would be sad when Phoenix left, but I didn’t expect him to show up this soon to ask about him. Phoenix is only a train ride away. It’s not like he’s halfway around the world.

I don’t know what happened when my brother told him he was leaving, but I’m fairly certain they had some kind of fight. Phoenix made an offhand comment to me that he “wished Wade would get over himself” but refused to explain what their disagreement was about.

They’re both adult men with cell phones, although maybe they don’t realize they’re capable of using them. I’ve talked to my brother once in the week he’s been gone, and Wade didn’t bother to text me a warning that he was stopping by.

“Want something to eat?” I ask as I stare up at Wade. All of a sudden, I realize I still have a hand resting on his very firm bicep. I jerk away as if burned and give a brittle smile.

He raises his eyebrows as if I just did something weird. But doing weird stuff is the story of my life.

He glances curiously around the apartment. “So this is your home?”

I shrug, walk to the small kitchen, and open one of the three cupboard doors. I pull out a box of peanut butter cereal and then reach into my fridge to grab some sliced cheese and deli meat for Wade .

“Isn’t it cute?” I say as I wash my hands, then pour my bowl of cereal and make a plate for Wade.

“It’s in the basement…”

I ignore him as I arrange some of the deli meat and cheese on a plate and slide it across the small island toward him.

My apartment might be in the basement of The Serendipity, an old apartment building, but I happen to think it’s quite charming.

When I was a kid, my mom would drive me by The Serendipity on the way to piano lessons, and it always seemed like a place with so much personality. I have one of those core memories of my eight-year-old self telling my mom I would live there someday.

It might seem silly to some people, but I’ve been absolutely thrilled to get to live here. There’s just something special about this place. It feels like home to me—even if it’s a home in the basement. The ceilings are lower down here, but with higher windows, I still get quite a bit of natural light. The windows look out toward a small park adjacent to the building, so I even get to see some pretty foliage andblooming flowers now that it’s spring.

“I like it,” I say firmly as I pour the milk over the cereal. The Serendipity used to be an old college dorm that was eventually converted into regular apartments. It has quite the history, and local lore runs rampant about it. My favorite stories are the ones that talk about the building as though it’s capable of magic.

“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with your apartment,” Wade says as he pulls out the bar stool with a loud scrape. He sinks down, and it creaks beneath his weight. He’s tall and broad and lifts weights heavier than him. He makes my apartment seem much smaller than it really is. “I didn’t come here to fight. ”

“Why did you come here?” I push the plate closer to him and then plant both hands on the counter.

“To eat your snacks, of course.” He grins and grabs a slice each of deli meat and cheese, shoving them into his mouth.

“I am the best snacker in the world.” I’m not sure if it’s something to be proud of, but it’s simply a fact at this point. Usually, my favorite snack is candy. And my favorite meal is cereal. I’m sure someday I’ll pay for my eating habits…but so far so good. The preservatives are keeping me young.

I do keep some meat and cheese in my refrigerator to appease my mother and tell her I’ve eaten some protein whenever she asks.

“I brought you something,” Wade says as he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a candy bar and tosses it to me. It’s a Snickers bar, soft and bent.

“Did it melt in your back pocket?” I hold it up with two fingers and study the travesty that used to be a candy bar.

He looks mildly pleased with himself, the same look my brother gets when he does something nice for me, but on Wade, it’s laced with ornery intentions.

“It’s bent in the shape of your butt!” I stare at the soft chocolate. But on the other hand, he did bring me a treat, and I don’t want to hurt his feelings, so I rip open the wrapper and take a bite from the messy bar. “Thank you. This is my favorite.”

“I know,” he says as he reaches for more meat and cheese.

“What are you really doing here?”

He glances around as though someone might be listening in. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do without Phoenix here,” Wade says with a shrug as he focuses on the plate again.

Wade isn’t one to share his feelings easily, so this feels big. “Have you been taking out your girlfriend?”

He shakes his head. “We’re not together anymore. ”

I gasp. “Since when?” I hop up and sit on my counter.

“Since we broke up about three months ago.”

That would have been fairly close to when I moved into The Serendipity. I feel bad that I haven’t kept up with him. I probably haven’t seen him since the holidays. “Phoenix didn’t tell me.”

“Well, that’s strange. I expected him to take out a billboard and announce to the world that I’m single again,” Wade muses sarcastically.

I shrug. “It would have been weird if I had texted you for the information.”

“What’s weird is that you want the information…”

“Don’t read into it, Wade. I just like to know what to be prepared for with you.” I swallow the lump in my throat as I try to give off a blasé impression. I’m pretty sure I fail miserably. I did want to know that information. I’ve grown up around this guy and care about his life.

Wade glances around the room, taking in the exposed heating ducts and beams on the ceiling. He stares at the brick wall where I’ve managed to hang some pictures and a giant clock. “Are all the apartments in the building this small? Or are you only the lucky one with the matchbox-sized one? Why don’t you find something bigger?”

“My imaginary friends and I don’t need much room. I like this place.” I point to the door leading to the one bedroom. “The bathroom has a beautiful old clawfoot tub. It’s huge and amazing.”

Wade gives me a serious look, all traces of teasing gone. “This is a basement, Scarlett. Phoenix wasn’t thrilled when you moved in here. He told me it was a dark basement, and I thought he was exaggerating. But now that I’ve seen it, I don’t think I’m happy for you either.”

What I don’t tell him is that I did try to rent another apartment in The Serendipity. 3E sits empty, but someone is still paying the lease on it, even though they’re not living there. The only availability was this small basement apartment. I was skeptical at first, but I’ve always wanted to live in this building, so I jumped at my chance, thinking that if an apartment opened up on one of the top floors, I would be on the inside track to rent it.

But it turns out I’m a basement type of gal. I don’t have near as much interaction with my neighbors down here. Just the occasional person coming down to access the storage space or the big laundry room.

It’s peaceful and safe down here. But I know that would sound ridiculous to say out loud to Wade. So I just grin as I open the fridge and pull out a couple of sodas. “It’s a good thing I didn’t ask either of you, then, isn’t it?”

Because The Serendipity? It’s everything I love about old buildings. From the beautiful staircase in the entry hall, to the temperamental elevator (which I never use), to community spaces available for use by all residents. The library space is my most frequented so far, but I imagine I’ll enjoy the outdoor pool in the summertime as well.

When I crack open my Pepsi can, it shoots up, spraying soda everywhere.

Wade grimaces, and we both stare at the mess covering my small kitchen.

“You know you’re not supposed to shake those, right?” he asks with a little laugh.

My glare must speak volumes because Wade stands up and hurries to the door. “On that note, I should probably go. I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours. I’ll catch you later, Scooter.”

Wade leaves as quickly as he showed up, and I’m left standing here in a puddle of sticky soda, feeling slightly annoyed that he called me Scooter.

The nickname came about when I was in late elementary school, trying to keep up with Phoenix and Wade. I followed the older middle school boys on my trusty scooter. Everywhere .

I bend down and slip off my soda-soaked socks.

When I stand back up, Wade is back inside my apartment, standing in front of the open door. “Maybe you should actually lock your apartment door. See ya!” He reaches a big hand around to flip the lock on the doorknob. He winks at me, then pulls the door closed after him.

The whole point of the locked main entrance to The Serendipity is that it keeps us safer. It’s too bad Gloria likes to let people in without knowing who they are. She’s too friendly and too trusting.

I march to the closet and pull out my favorite mop to clean up the sticky mess. The previous building manager lived in this basement apartment before I did, and he left behind an old-fashioned mop. With having stained concrete floors, it’s been a well-used tool for me, and I’m glad he left it behind.

I scrub away at the floor and think that maybe—just maybe—it would be nice to see Wade more. It’s been a long time since I’ve been around him…and I think I actually miss him.